Posted on 07/01/2005 6:54:34 PM PDT by quidnunc
Nothing rattles the American Left so completely as the specter of a conservative, Bush-appointed Supreme Court. And no wonder. Over the last half-century, sympathetic judges have given the Left “progressive” policy outcomes that the voting booth wouldn’t deliver. It is this liberal judicial legacy — everything from affirmative action to partial-birth abortion — that the Left fears a Bush-influenced bench will sweep away. Haunted by the doomsday scenario of a Supreme Court dominated by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Democrats and their allies will fight with every means they can muster to block the appointment of conservative justices. If their ferocious and successful campaign against Bush’s recent circuit-court nominee, Charles Pickering, is any augury — and it is — those means (which in Pickering’s case included scandalously false accusations of racism) will be nasty.
What the liberals fear is a conservative judicial philosophy called “originalism,” which holds that judges must base their rulings on the Constitution’s text and structure, as the Framers understood it, and they must interpret statutes to mean what they say. Very different from the activist and creative jurisprudence that has prevailed for the last half-century, this approach, which was the Framers’ accepted view of judging, would never have permitted the Court’s expansive policymaking role that produced some of the Left’s most cherished victories. An originalist Court could even overturn some of those victories as unanchored in the Constitution.
Regardless of your view of the specific policies at issue, it is vital to America’s future that Bush win this battle for the courts: the Supreme Court’s politicized role in recent decades is corroding the self-government at the heart of American constitutionalism. In a democracy, voters, not unelected judges, decide the momentous questions. When the Supreme Court forces its policy preferences on the American people without the clear warrant of a constitutional text, as has happened often in the last 50 years, it is acting more as an “anti-democratic Caesar” than as the impartial referee it’s supposed to be, in Justice Scalia’s view. Moreover, by politicizing constitutional law, the Court has weakened the rule of law that is the bedrock of our constitutional form of government. As Justice Thomas notes, if law is just politics, “then there are no courts at all, only legislatures, and no Constitution or law at all, only opinion polls.” Why then would you need unelected judges to perform the same function as an elected congress?
-snip-
I wonder if Tancredo is a lawyer.....
Don't hold your breath.
I am not looking forward to this, my blood is going to boil!
Thanks for the post.
It isn't bush I am so worried about but the RINO's.
Anyone want to speculate upon who the nominee will be? I am betting on Orrin Hatch, who is not among the front-runners, but has been mentioned as a possibility. He has a solid conservative voting record, but strangely enough, he and Ted Kennedy are friends. Senators tend to be kind to their own, and I think he'd be easier to get through the process than any of the other potential candidates. What do you think?
I hope not.
W is not a conservative and will not appoint a truly conservative judge. My guess is AG.
I know W is not a Conservative and I've had that same fear about Gonzales. He's a La Raza guy and anti-gun. He will be a huge blow to Conservatives, but I wouldn't put it past Bush to chose him. I don't know whether he would hurt us more on the SC or as the AG. Either way, I don't share Bush's enthusiasm for him.
You got it right. I hope he gets good advise on this one but I'm afraid it won't go our way. His daddy got us Souter.
Orrin Hatch?
NUT HATCH?!?!?
God forbid!
If I had to guess as to why it would be nasty, my reason would be:
Because democrats are mouth-breathing, drooling, nasty-a*s, reactionary, reflexively intolerant, fur-breasted, selfish, unthinking, blinkered, pig-ignorant, self-loathing, never-to-be-satisfied, unwavering, anti-intellectual, hyper-emotional, hypocritical, imbecillic, morally-retarded, mentally-deficient, over-indulged, tortured, tormented, perpetually guilty, adolescent, infantile, breath-holding, tantrum-throwing, nose-picking, class-warfare-mongering, empty-headed, sexually-obsessed, depraved, indifferent, solipsistic, semantics-oriented, manic-depressive, pretentious, snobbish, deprecating, patronizing, sleazy, slimy, criminal-minded, assinine, crass, boring, overbearing, myopic, hair-splitting little idiots.
Gee, that felt good!
Hatch would be considered too old...need someone who will be around longer to influence the court longer
I would go further and say the Republican party would be dead. No point.
His daddy is the one who groomed him to be a globalist, kiss up to the UN. He's following in daddy's steps and that's why I'm afraid you're right. He's just got to please everyone, including the RATS. I'm already mad at him, and he hasn't even named his first choice. LOL
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